


complacency in a house of cards

by anamatics



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: AU Week, Alternate Universe - Politics, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-12
Updated: 2014-01-18
Packaged: 2017-12-29 04:19:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 19,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1000803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamatics/pseuds/anamatics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or the one where they’re in congress.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"We have to stop doing this."

The briefing book tumbles down onto the desk before Myka, her eyes growing hard.  This has never been easy.  It never can be easy. 

And yet complacency rises like a specter in the room.  Her eyes trail up the figure leaning against the doorway and her tongue darts out, wetting her lips. 

There's a door and the drapes are pulled and god - complacency sounds really good right about now.

"I know."

Myka's taller than her but a good four inches, even if she favors flat shoes.  She pushes herself to her feet and leaves the briefing book open on the desk.  Corn growth in Nebraska is mind numbing on a good day. 

Want fills her and she finds herself unsteady.  They should not be doing this.  They cannot be doing this.  They're not supposed to know each other, let alone be fucking behind the closed door of Myka's office.

Once, in anger, Myka had asked if she fucked all her subordinates, or just the ones that interested her.  The answer was not what Myka had been expecting, a quiet confession that it was only ever her.  Myka is just a girl from Colorado.  She has nothing that someone else couldn't give her a thousand times over.

And yet it's always Myka. 

Her eyes flick to the door and it's closed with a snap. 

There's never any words between them, they hardly ever have time.  They're far too busy for romance. 

They had never intended for it to go this far, for them to rise so high.  She's speaker now, the mouth of the party.  Myka knows her resume backwards and forwards, American but raised in England, graduated Oxford and Harvard Law. Lost a child and a husband and spun her grief into political gold. A silver tongued devil - a politician to the core.

And this?  This is best kept secret in Washington.  This will destroy both of them.  And Myka wants to be press secretary or communications director someday.

"Speaker..." Myka begins, but there are fingers pressed to her lips and the sin of what's about to happen collapses down upon her.  She can't let it, and yet it's all she wants.

"Come now, Myka.  We know each other far too well for titles." 

She hops up onto the desk, those legs crossed and her sinfully high heels dangling off of one stocking-clad foot. 

And Myka wants. 

Wants and knows that she should not take.  She's a first term junior congresswoman from Colorado.  She got elected on a conservative platform, harping on the military and families.  They ate it up, her own two-faced-ness had never been brought into question.  They see her as a former secret service agent who left the job after tragedy.

Myka'd been the one to pull the trigger that time.  A necessity for a cause she hadn't quite realized.

They're fools all of them. 

Her depravity is evident now, hesitant fingers sliding up the Speaker's leg and her eyes never leaving the intense brown of the Speaker's.  Her skirt slides up easily, stockings giving way to garters and Myka falls to her knees before this woman who has figured out what makes her tick almost effortlessly. 

"Aren't you just the perfect little liar," She'd said when she first saw Myka's eyes flick downwards to the many open buttons of her shirt not three days after Myka'd moved into her office in the Capitol. 

They're political enemies, but probably allies now.

Sweat and pain and lingering looks is the currency that they trade. 

And it's helped, maybe more than it should.  Myka is a junior congresswoman, but she gets called into committees and meets with the other side more often than many of her peers.  They resent her, she knows, but she doesn't care.  This is just a stepping stone, even if she must mount the Speaker to get where she wants to go.

"I know what you're doing," she says and Myka looks up, staring into the charming face of her downfall.  "And that isn't how this works."

Myka bows her head.

"What do I have to do?" She asks, and she won't admit that she's desperate to touch once more.  This woman can smell weakness and weakness can be manipulated. 

Manipulation works better as a two-way street.

That question earns her a head tilt.  "We have to stop doing this, Myka dear.  Do not give me a reason to cut you off before you're ready."  Fingers cup her cheek and Myka bites her lip to keep from leaning into the touch.  "You need to get Yeltz on board with HR-236."

And Myka cannot help but ask, "How?" Yeltz is the bill's most vocal opponent, he hates that it’s establishing that creationism is a religious concept and cannot be taught in schools.  The Speaker’s party loves it and Myka thinks it’s a good thing too.  The constitution pretty clearly establishes a difference between church and state, and such things have no business being taught in schools. 

Still, Yeltz is of the vocal part of the party, not the part that stands for things that maybe Myka can actually get behind.  They’re religious and they’re vicious in their defense of it, to defy them would be to bring their ire and their attention.  The Speaker knows this, and she’s asking for it anyway.

"Oh, I'm sure you'll think of something," The Speaker replies airily.  "You're very persuasive when you want to be."

"I won't sleep with him," Myka says quietly.

She's met with a critical look then, and Myka assesses her position and realizes how terrible it is to denounce such a thing when that's what she's technically doing.  Even if the Speaker is her opposition's boss and certainly not her own, the remark goes unsaid and Myka swallows.

"I don't sleep with men," she amends. 

And the Speaker's eyes turn dark and Myka is pulled roughly to her feet.  "And thank god for that," the Speaker says.  "Your talent is wasted on them."

The door is locked and complacency comes back so easily that Myka can almost forget the pangs of longing she gets when she wakes up alone in her apartment most mornings.  She wants this woman more than she probably should and she cannot help herself. 

"Helena..." she breathes quietly, and leans forward to kiss her.  Her fingers grip the edge of the desk on either side of Helena’s thighs and she pushes herself up and into the kiss, knowing that this stolen moment is all that they will have to be themselves before they fall, once more, into the roles that they’ve been cast into.

Ambition does terrible things to people.

The Speaker’s lipstick is smeared across her cheeks, on her neck and the valley between her breasts before long.  Myka wants and Myka needs and Myka takes what she is given because she will figure out something with Yeltz, she knows she will.  She bends to her knees and pulls the Speaker’s skirt up, fingers lingering too long on the backs of her thighs, nails scraping up the backs of them to cup her ass. 

And there is nothing there.

“Why Speaker Wells,” Myka murmurs.  She looks up through her eyelashes at this great political force above her.  She’s greeted with a fond smile and fingers in her hair.  They tug and Myka grins back up at her.  “People would talk, should they know.”

“They talk anyway darling, they loathe women in power.” Helena sighs and scoots forwards.  Her skirt has ridden up completely over her ass now, bunched at her waist, just garters and stocking and heels.  Myka’s tongue darts out of her mouth, swiping at her bottom lip nervously.  “But I think you rather like it.”

Someday, she knows, this woman will be president.  And they don’t agree on much of anything except that _yes_ , Myka does so love a woman in power.  A walking hypocrite and a living contradiction – she is sure that she’ll end up in disgrace.  Forced out of the closet on her knees before this woman and loving every minute of it.

A drug she’ll never dare quit.  

Myka dips her head forward, her lips brushing gently at the juncture of thigh and hip.  The Speaker is warm and smells as good as ever, and Myka’s tongue darts out to lick tentatively at first.  She likes to start gentle when they do have time, and she’s not sure that they do right now.  She delves in, licking just once, a slow circle around overly excitable skin and above her, the Speaker’s fingers tense in her hair.

She’s close then, close and needing to release this tension.

It’s so easy to wonder if this is all that the Speaker sees her for, but Myka’s seen signs that it isn’t.  This could become something, she knows.  She could fall in love with Helena Wells, if only they’d talk to each other instead of doing this.  Her tongue circles once more and the Speaker lets out a barely muffled groan. 

She goes for the easy way, because she wants what she can get and she truly could be falling in love with this woman and the very idea of it terrifies her.  Myka flicks her tongue back and forth and slides the fingers of her right hand to press gently into the Speaker, curling and pushing forward.  She sets a steady rhythm, her fingers rocking in time with the Speaker’s hips as her tongue moves faster and faster still.  Her jaw aches but Myka doesn’t dare stop.  Her hair is being pulled and this woman, this powerful, put together woman, is falling apart in her hands.

This is her power. 

The Speaker does this with no one but her.

And when Helena comes, Myka kisses her full and deep, their bodies pressed against each other.  The Speaker’s tongue is in her mouth and her fingers are undoing the button on Myka’s slacks, sliding her hand into sticky damp heat and tracing small circles around Myka until she’s bucking into the touch and biting the Speaker’s neck hard, trying not to scream.

Myka likes the afterwards the best.  It’s when Helena stops being the Speaker all together and is simply a woman who Myka could easily fall in love with.  They linger there, with weak knees and breathless from the endeavor.  Helena rests her head on Myka’s shoulder, her breathing steadying and her fingers playing idly with the curls that run riotous down Myka’s back.  Myka trails her fingers down Helena’s perfectly starched shirt, smoothing away the wrinkles of this encounter and breathing in the scent of Helena’s shampoo, her nose buried in Helena’s dark hair.

“We really need to stop doing this,” Myka says as Helena pulls away and her face once more schools itself perfectly neutral.  She’s the Speaker once more, and she holds all the power in this house of cards. 

“You’ll talk to Yeltz?”

Myka smiles wanly at the Speaker, pulling a tissue from the box on her desk and moving to stand by the mirror mounted on the wall.  She licks it and begins to scrub away the lipstick that’s smeared across her neck.  Her skin turns red and somehow it isn’t enough.  She scrubs and scrubs and there’s fingers closing around her own.

“Darling,” and its Helena once more.  Myka only wishes she could turn herself on and off like that.  “I don’t ever want to stop doing this with you,” and when Myka meets Helena’s eyes there’s such _truth_ there behind that silver tongue that Myka should know better than to trust it.  But she trusts it all the same.  A fool for what could someday be love, that’s all she is. 

“Then don’t,” Myka says rashly.  “Come out with me, somewhere nice.  We can have dinner.”  She throws it out there, knowing it can never truly happen.  It would doom both of them before they ever had a chance.

Helena looks away, biting at her lip and tucking in her skirt at the same time.  She runs her hands over it once, making sure she’s satisfied, before she reaches for Myka.  “If that is what you truly want, I will not deny you it.”

Because they both know it can never be. 

No matter how hard they want it. 

Myka buttons her blouse and turns to press her lips gently to Helena’s cheek.  “I’ll speak to Yeltz, but don’t expect a miracle.”

The mask falls back into place, and the Speaker nods, heading for the door. 

“And one other thing,” Myka says quietly, bartering when she has nothing in her pockets.  “Don’t come here again as the Speaker.”

A single nod is all the response she gets, before the door is flung open and the quiet buzz of conversation and activity fills her office once more.  “Thank you, Congresswoman Bering,” the Speaker says smoothly.  She nods curtly to Myka, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Thank you,” Myka says quietly in response.  She’s rewarded with a weak smile and then the Speaker is gone and Myka’s left alone with her briefing book once more. 

Corn growth in Nebraska it is then.


	2. Chapter 2

She's a schemer, always has been.  She looks for patterns and sees them easily in things.  She follows trends and picks up on habits.

Myka finds Ted Yeltz at a bar not far from the Capitol a week later quite by chance.  The Speaker's words hang like a yoke around her neck and where Myka would once turn back and find her vices elsewhere, she is pulled forward and into the nearly empty bar. 

There's baseball game on the TV behind the bar, but she scarcely follows sports these days.  There's no time, her mind totally wrapped up in self-loathing and desperation.  She is a liar, and it's slowly eating her soul from the inside.

But this is the last time.  The last time she'll do the Speaker's bidding without asking for anything other than indulgence in her dirty little secret in return. 

Myka shoves off her jacket and settles herself at the bar, ordering a vodka cranberry and staring down at it for a long time when it arrives.  Ice floating in blood, it is.  Liquid courage for something she's not sure is even possible.

"Congresswoman," The bartender hands her back her ID and accepts the ten she hands him and doesn't offer change. 

Ted Yeltz looks up then, inclining his head to one side.  The white ring of hair around his pristinely bald crown looks almost red in the light from the glowing Budweiser sign behind the bar.  Myka stares down at her drink, fingers slowly curling into a fist.  She cannot make the first move, that's an amateur mistake.

"Myka, right?" he asks.  And his tone is low and conversational, friendly even.  The man is a snake who would string her up the Washington Monument as a warning to all others who came after.  Here is a liar, a cheat of her constituents who fucked the opposition to get ahead.  Here is a homosexual who dared to share my values. 

Myka tries to look surprised and thinks she manages it pretty reasonably well. "Congressman Yeltz," she says politely.  "I didn't see you when I came in..."

He shrugs, glasses glinting in the light and he looks almost shrewd for a moment before Myka's stomach pitches forward and realizes that he'd seen her hesitation in the doorway.  "You looked rather preoccupied when you came in."  He holds out his hand.  "I don't think I've ever properly met you, though.  Ted Yeltz, Tennessee Sixth."

Myka takes his hand and speaks her doom.  "Myka Bering, Colorado Second."  She hopes that he does not mention her primary victory over the incumbent congressman, mired in scandal as he had been. 

"Your biography says you used to be one of the boys in black," he gestures to the back of the bar where there's a grim-faced man in a suit who looks as though he'd rather be anywhere but here.  Myka isn't important enough to have a Secret Service detail, or so she thinks.  They might also think because she used to be one that she doesn't need one.  "Quite the undertaking for one so young."

Myka smiles genuinely then, because it really had not been that big a deal.  "Please," she says quietly.  "I worked in a mint."

"Most of us are lawyers with the odd doctor or economist thrown in there, a former Secret Service Agent's pretty exciting," Yeltz looks at her sideways for a minute and Myka takes that opportunity to reach down and pick up her drink.  The napkin sticks to it and she makes a face, before bringing it up to her lips and sipping as delicately as she can.  She doesn’t feel like drinking any more.  "Especially when that newcomer is miraculously able to get into talks with the opposition on all number of things that would have previously been considered - how do I put this - off limits?"

Myka shrugs.  "Maybe I'm just as intriguing to them as I am to you, sir."

"Wells certainly seems to like you," Yeltz comments and Myka raises an eyebrow at him.  "The leadership talks about this sort of thing, Myka, surely you must know that.  It’s not exactly a wise career move to get in bed with the opposition."

"I know," Myka replies.  Because she truly does and it cuts her up inside just to think about it.  "However it's getting things done isn't it?"

Yeltz raises his glass in a mock toast.  "True," he says.  His sips long and deep, but it's deceptive.  His neck is barely moving and the level of the glass hasn't gone down at all.  Myka knows she's risking everything, playing the big fish like this.  She's still so new to this pond, however, that a few choice words cannot hurt.

The promise to the Speaker looms large in her mind and Myka feels her stomach turn acidic and she reaches for her drink again.  It will not quell this feeling, but it might mask it for a moment.  Mimicking Yeltz' gesture she toasts him and takes a sip.  Tart fire spreads across her body and blossoms red-hot across her forehead.  Courage is all she has then.  "The Speaker wants more of us onboard with HR-236," Myka says.  The words sort of jumble together and she's saying them all at once.  She feels stupid and ill-prepared, but she knows she has to get it out or else she will have broken her promise and she will never, ever, become that person again.

"And she sent you to ask me to agree to support something I oppose?"  Yeltz asks.  He nearly snorts into his drink when he says it and Myka finds herself shrugging in response. 

Sometimes telling the truth is the best lie of all. 

"I really don't know what to tell you," Yeltz laughs.  "I'm going to vote no on it, I'm going to campaign against it, and nothing that Helena Wells says is going to get me to change my mind."

"Why not support it and use it to garner a favor from Wells?"  Myka asks, chewing on her lip and stirring her drink with the tiny straw, watching as the ice cubes melt in the low light of the bar.  Moisture is dewing on the sides and she swipes her finger through it, raising it, unthinking, to her lips. 

Yeltz watches her with narrowed eyes behind his glasses.  "She sent you to sleep with me to get my vote..." the accusation is not without merit, but Myka just shakes her head.  That's too easy an answer, after all. 

"No, Congressman, she knows better than to ask that."  Myka inclines her head to one side.  "Besides, I think you and I both know that I'm not that stupid."

"To use the Speaker's fascination with you to get yourself ahead?"  Yeltz shakes his head.  "I think you're exactly that stupid, it's a rookie mistake."

To tip her hand now would be a fool's errand, and Myka sips her drink.  "I'm here because I thought you might be interested to know that she's willing to allow your farm revitalization project to go along with the bill, despite her reservations with the environmental impacts of the proposed tactics."  She tilts the rest of the drink back and smiles sweetly at the snake of a man before her.  Swallowing and picking up the napkin to dab the blood red juice from her lips, Myka adds, "And since you campaigned on that, congressman, wouldn't you like to be able to deliver?"

Yeltz's eyes narrow and he stares down at his drink for a moment as Myka reaches for her coat and stands, shrugging it back over her shoulder.  "You're one of her people, aren't you?  A plant of some sort for them?"

"No sir, I just happen to believe in working with the opposition, you'll find that most people agree on that getting things is better than the alternative.  Gridlock is oftentimes resolved by fresh faces," Myka tucks her phone into her pocket and picks up her bag.  "Have a good night."

She's not buzzed, and her heart is racing as she stalks out of the bar.  She's proven her point, and she wonders if the payback will be enough. 

She walks across the street and turns north, away from the Capitol.  The Speaker had asked her to deliver and she had, but it had not come without a cost.  And Myka had wanted there to be a cost, a payback for asking this of her.  They both know full-well that their relationship cannot work for so many reasons.  Myka wants to have a cabinet position someday, and the Speaker is her way in.  There has already been discussion that she might run, and she's been booked as the DNC keynote speaker since before the President swore in for his second term. 

She's supposed to hate them and everything that they stand for, but she can't.  Not when there are men like Yeltz who assume too much and see far more than they let on.  She has climbed in bed with the opposition and the Speaker, just probably not in the way that he thinks.

She tugs her phone out of her pocket and dials the Speaker's number from memory. She's never added it for fear that someone would discover who she's been in contact with.  It rings twice before it's picked up. 

"It's done," she says quietly.

"Really darling?"  The Speaker drawls into the phone and it goes straight to Myka's gut, a silent thrill of doing well and knowing that she's earned herself something more important than a favor.  A chance for them to be themselves and not titles, a chance to be equals.  "I knew you could do it."

"You have to let Yeltz's farming project on as rider," Myka adds, a smirk playing at her lips.  She can see the Speaker now, sitting behind that big imposing desk of her's, her brow furrowed and a scowl on her face at the very idea of caving to one of Yeltz's demands.

The Speaker chuckles.  "Well, the man does drive a hard bargain; I suppose it's to be expected."

"I'm not doing this for you anymore," Myka replies.  "He said the party leadership was concerned that I was too close with you and yours."  She shakes her head and stares up at the Washington Monument.  It's lit up, a white phallic pillar straight up into the sky.  A middle finger to the world, an extension of nukes and Monroe's Doctrine and the clout of the last great Superpower. 

Myka hates it.  To change that perception is why she got into politics in the first place.  Sold her soul to the devil down the river and shackled herself to the belief that she could make a difference.

"Careful," the Speaker says quietly.  "Or you'll give me the impression you want to stop this."  She humms low and the hairs on the back of Myka's neck stand up on end.  "And we both know that that's not true."

And she can't say no.  Because it is true.  She wants this more than she probably should and she hates that she's being dragged, kicking and screaming from so many closets all at once.  She's not a real conservative, she's not even a real heterosexual.  She's just a mess and the Speaker can play on her insecurities like a fiddle.

"Where?"  Myka asks.

"Wait for my text," the Speaker makes a derisive sound.  "I have a rather irate Republican leader in chewing out my secretary for not letting him into my office.  You did well, Myka.  I shan't be long."

Myka slumps down onto a park bench to wait, chewing on her lip and scanning through emails on her phone.  Pete Lattimer has emailed her the latest in ridiculous threats made on the president and Myka reads them with a smile on her face.  Pete was briefly posted in Denver before he'd decided that a mint was not how he wanted to be doing his Secret Service tenure.  He'd transferred to DC and had worked his way onto the presidential detail. 

At the end of the email, Pete has added a question about potentially getting together for drinks or golf or something on his one non-abnormal weekend this month.  Myka replies with quick fingers, telling him, for what feels like the hundredth time, that he shouldn't be emailing her stuff like this.  Even if it is in the abstract.  She adds that she'd love to get dinner with him and to pick a place.  Pete has great taste in food, most of the time, and besides, Myka picked last time.

She answers a few other emails, and is mid-way through a text to her secretary to tell her that she's done for the night when a text comes through from a blocked number.  It has an address that Myka knows is close but very out of the way for the political types. 

It's a restaurant.

Swallowing, Myka stands and begins to walk.  This cannot be a good plan.

It's late now, later than a place like this would be open usually.  Myka stares up at the awning and wonders what could possibly be waiting for her inside this dark shell of a building.  The Speaker has her moments, but Myka’s lying to herself and saying that it feels more like Helena, like how she could be, if everything was different.

There are no patrons inside, and a single light is cast over a solitary table.  Myka feels her lips quirk up, and her heart starts to beat faster.  Somewhere in the darkness is the Speaker, waiting to spring.  Myka promises herself she won’t jump when Helena springs her trap.  She stands perfectly still in the middle of the room, listening to the quiet sound of voices and footsteps from beyond this room in the darkness. 

“Yeltz is rather convinced that you’re a plant, Myka,” Helena comes in from a door that Myka hadn’t seen.  She’s followed by a gentleman that Myka can only assume is either the chef or the owner of the establishment. He's carrying a bottle of wine and a corkscrew and has two menus tucked under his arm.  “John was good enough to keep the restaurant open for us late, so please, sit.”

Myka slides into a chair opposite Helena and looks at her long and critical.  Her hair is spilling down over her shoulders and she’s not wearing a suit.  Just a simple sweater and well-loved jeans.  Myka feels overdressed in her smart clothes and overly patriotic lapel pin.  She shrugs off her jacket.  “He said as much to me, I set him straight.”

Helena reaches forward, her fingers brushing against Myka’s palm and Myka swallows.  This is what she’s always wanted, to not be afraid and to simply look at this woman with all the love and adoration she’s afraid to express publicly.  “You did well, Myka.  Truly.  This is will be a coup for all those who want change in education.  This will give it to them.  You are absolutely stunning at the game when you put your mind to it.”

And just for a minute, Myka can blush at the compliment and smile shyly back.  In this moment they can forget that they’re not opposed in all things and that they _cannot_ have a quiet dinner like this in a restaurant where there are people. 

She’s so sick of lying, and of everyone guessing her secrets.  She has so many she can scarcely count them, but the one that hurts the most is the ache in her heart when she knows what the people she agrees with, most of the time, would do if they ever found out.   She’s not sure if its fear that’s holding her back, or a want of a career.

Maybe she can still survive this.

Myka takes a deep breath and looks up into Helena’s eyes.  “What would it take, hypothetically, to come out?”


	3. Chapter 3

Perhaps it is just that, a distraction.  A carefully orchestrated question that is sure to make her think for more than a passing moment about how much and how deeply this affects her on so many levels.  Myka posits it knowing that she can never actually do it.  It is an impossibility if she wants to keep her career.

She's a professional liar to everyone in her life, even this woman she's half-way convinced she's falling in love with. 

They're sitting in a restaurant alone in the dark, knowing that this is the closest they can ever come to this and Myka hates it. The claustrophobic feeling of the darkness closing in around her and swallowing her in her lies and her sin is enough to make her want to actually go through with it.

"Quite more than you're willing to sacrifice," Helena whispers.  Her voice is reverent, and her fingers are trailing along the inside of Myka's wrist.  The touch burns her and she struggles to not flinch away from the feeling.  She wants it, and yet she does not.  It comes with far too high a price. 

Myka closes her eyes and humms her agreement.  "I figured as much," she confesses.  It doesn't feel good to lie to Helena, it never has.  She can play the game, screw Helena when Helena screws her first.  It doesn't feel good, though, it never has. 

And that is the crux of this, the fact that Myka knows she cannot keep this façade up, no matter how desperately she wants to.  It has to be all in, all in or nothing at all.  They cannot keep doing this, it will be their ruin.

"That was a dirty trick you played with Yeltz," Helena comments as the restaurant's proprietor appears with two places of what Myka thinks might be fish.  It's done up in an interesting sauce with a reddish-orange puree on the side that she pokes with her fork before remember that it's rude to do such a thing.  She's not in college any more, she cannot have hang ups about food. 

She humms in response to Helena's accusation and prods the puree again.  It jiggles and Myka decides it's got to be some combination of squash and maybe a radish or cabbage.  "You asked me to do the impossible; I did what I had to do."

Helena picks up her fork and stares at it for a minute, Ariel under the sea.  The look of wonderment on her face isn't lost on Myka and Myka wonders if she is the fisherman at the end of that story, drowned in the depths of obsessive love.  "I suppose I did," she says judiciously.  "Darling, you aren't serious about what you said earlier, are you?"

It had been a distraction then, but Myka hates the weight of the world that settles on her shoulders when she thinks of continuing this charade.  She tries the puree to distract herself from giving a straight answer, but the words tumble around the sweetly smooth taste of the squash.  "It's a hypothetical, but one that I am finding a more and more appealing with every passing moment."  She glances around at the dark restaurant and the single light illuminating their food and table.  "All this cloak and dagger is too much.  Someone will figure it out."

"It's better to be a badly kept secret than a scandal," Helena replies.  "Your career would be destroyed.  They'd never accept you back into their fold, no matter how you toed the line."  She lowers her voice and whispers almost conspiratorially.  "Have you ever thought about going independent?"

Myka wrinkles her nose. 

She has thought about it though, she's lied and lied and hurt people she should care for.  People like her.  She's got a voice when they do not and she ignores their pleas.  She's no better than the worst of them.  She deserves their company.  She cannot face her voting record and knowing what she did to hurt those like herself. 

"Perish the thought then, darling," Helena hurries on.  "I doubt that it'd work as well as it did for Jeffords."

"Because I'm not from Vermont?"  Myka asks with raised eyebrows. 

Helena shakes her head.  "No, because you won't be breaking up the majority."  She purses her lips and frowns down at her food.  "The idea is not without merit, however, if that's what you really want.  I know a good fixer who can smooth things over." 

"Yeltz and the zealots will probably catch on sooner or later."  Myka picks at her food pessimistically.  "And I don't know what they'll do when they find out."

They lapse into silence, nightmare scenarios drawing themselves up in a fine parade of horrors as Myka tries to force herself to smile at Helena and eat.  This is a night gesture, the sort of gesture that sends her secretly over the moon.  She hates that she can't appreciate it.  That she's so plagued by worry and fear that she can't even understand that Helena wants this probably as much as she does.

The food is gone and the void that exists between them is closed as Helena slides forward and wraps her arms around Myka's waist.  She pulls her in tight and holds her there, her body right and warm and there. 

"Get out of your head," Helena whispers.  "Or all that you fear will come to pass."  She takes Myka's hand and draws her out and into the night, into a waiting, private car, and back to the one place where Myka has never dared let this take her.

Once, Helena Wells had had a husband, a daughter and a promising future.  All that had been ripped from her in what in what some on Myka's party described as karmic retribution for her philandering while in Washington.  An explosion in the Speaker's basement workshop, harkening back her time as a chemist before she'd ever dared take on the political mantle. 

This was where they'd lived when they were in Washington.  This place, the one barrier that Myka had never dared breach.

It's quiet on the inside, all dark woods and old rugs that smell like books and ink and papers.  They're beautiful as Helena turns on lamps and pulls her into a den lined with books and sports two comfortable chairs and a low table with several bottles and glasses.  It's all so ridiculously classy that Myka feels out of place.  She's the daughter of a bookseller and a school teacher.  She doesn't belong in a place like this.

On the wall over a fireplace that looks to be fake despite all the atmospheric evidence to the contrary, there's a mantle that plays host to a series of framed photographs.  A kind-faced man is pictured, with a child with dark curls and eyes that stare into Myka's soul as she stares at the snapshot.  It's at the beach somewhere, they're sandy and wet and smiling. 

She's an intruder in this sanctuary.

"I will not tell you to look away from my past, Myka.  It is well known," Helena has two glasses in her hands and she offers one to Myka with a twitch of lips and a twinkle in her eye.

Swallowing, Myka shakes her head.  "She was beautiful," is all she can say.  The child looks like her mother, her eyes hold that same quiet bemusement with the world.  The fact that she's gone slices Myka's soul in two.  No innocent should have to die that way.

"Yes..."  Helena's voice is distant and when Myka takes the glass from her proffered hand, her eyes flash hard and dangerous.  Myka bites the inside of her cheek and looks away.  She's struck a nerve and she doesn't know how to fix it. 

Maybe it's for the best.  She doesn't belong here anyway.

She raises the glass to her lips and tilts it back, feeling the burn at the back of her throat and swallowing the harsh amber of the bourbon she's been poured in one swallow.  It chokes her, and tears prickle at the corners of her eyes, but Myka keeps her face perfectly still and neutral.  Swallowing, she sets the glass down and steps towards Helena. 

"Who is your fixer?" 

Helena stares at Myka for a long moment before her face blossoms into a smile and the future seems to stretch eternal.  "Her name is Claudia Donovan; she's a grad student at Georgetown."

Her life in the hands of a child.  Myka supposes that it's already in the hands of the Washington scandal machine.  Yeltz has run back to his cohorts to try and analyze the conversation they'd had and then Helena's agreement to his demands without so much as a fight.

They'd figure it out sooner rather than later.

"I'll give you her card in the morning, darling," Helena murmurs, rising up on her toes and reminding Myka that her shoes are kicked off by the door along with Myka's flats.  She's eye to eye with Myka and there's so much emotion behind those eyes that Myka can almost forget that this woman could crush everything she stands for in a heartbeat. 

And when Helena kisses her, Myka does forget.  Her fingers dip under Helena's soft sweater and rest on hips and somehow, Myka can convince herself that it's all going to be alright.

The night falls to touch and careful exploration of all that Myka has wanted but has not dared ask for.  Helena knows her, she knows the power that a kind word and a smile and where to place responsibility and where to lay her tongue.  Myka writhes beneath her, her mind carefully blank and her world exploding in the colors of the day, crisp and cool and wonderful as she falls apart at this bewitching woman’s hands.

She knows she should not want this. It’s an imperfect future and not entirely one that she can ever escape.  She’s doomed to shoulder it and she can’t quite bring herself to resent it.  It feels too good as Helena pushes her over the edge time and time again.

And maybe it’s enough to just forget, even for a moment.

They leave before the dawn has cracked.  The Speaker has a breakfast meeting with the minority whip and Myka doesn’t want to be seen within ten miles of her after her conversation with Congressman Yeltz yesterday.  She takes the train to Georgetown and follows the directions that Helena’s scrawled onto the back of a budget summary brief that she’d pulled from her briefcase without even looking at it. 

The building she’s standing in front of, as she comes to the end of Helena’s very clear and concise directions, is rather derelict to house the best fixer in all of DC.  Myka supposes that keeping a low profile is sort of what these types do, but this place pushes even that limit.  She takes a deep breath and steps inside, not knowing where, exactly, she’s headed.

There’s a window that takes up an entire wall on the floor the directory indicates belongs to Claudia Donovan, and Myka sits in a straight-backed chair and fidgets with yesterday’s clothes and borrowed underwear.  She can’t keep doing this, it’s killing her inside.

The stories never said that love was supposed to feel like this. 

Myka chews on her lip and waits, not sure what she’s expecting.

“Ah, you’re H.G.’s then,” comes a voice from the formerly closed office door just to Myka’s right.  A fresh-faced girl – and Myka says girl because she _cannot_ be older than eighteen and certainly _not_ old enough to be in graduate school – is leaning against the door. She’s wearing Doc Martins and a beat up bomber jacket that looks as though it’s old enough to have seen combat at some point, but underneath it there are professional-looking slacks and a button down and vest.  Myka can’t help but smile, just a little bit.  She supposes that she does belong to the Speaker, despite her best efforts to the contrary. 

“Myka Bering,” she says, holding out her hand. 

The girl does not take it, but inspects it thoughtfully for a moment, before her gaze rises up to meet Myka’s under artfully swept aside red bangs. 

“Claudia Donovan,” she says at length, continuing her appraising look of Myka.  “I know who you are, congresswoman.”

“Then you know why I’m here,” Myka replies smoothly.

Claudia steps aside and ushers Myka into her office.  There are an array of televisions against one wall and more of the same huge window along the other.  Myka wonders how she copes with the glare on the screens, but they’re all off right now, so she supposes that maybe it’s not an issue when the sun’s directly overhead and not filling the room with bright morning sunlight.  “I do,” Claudia replies.  “But I’d like to hear it from you.”

Myka sits down in the far more comfortable looking chair on the opposite side of the desk from where Claudia is standing.  She’s shrugging off her jacket, tossing it over to the sofa that is shoved against the wall.  Myka wonders if she’d slept here. 

“I’m gay.” 


	4. Chapter 4

And Myka spells out her doom. 

Claudia Donovan listens and takes a few notes, but mostly just listens.  She lets Myka tell her about Sam and about Denver, about how her father had always wanted a son and how she'd never quite fit anywhere at all.  She is ruthless, relentless in her pursuit of what she wants, and she'd ended up in congress on what almost feels like a whim these days.  She certainly doesn't believe in the party she represented any more. 

No, her convictions had led her into the foolish belief that she could _change_ things, and that this posting, like so many before it, was just a stepping stone.  Myka knows that she’s destined for great things.  Great and terrible things and that ambition sometimes blinds her and drives her into action that seems illogical otherwise. 

She’s sitting in this office, spilling out her secrets to a college kid who she doesn’t even _know_ and somehow she’s okay with what’s happening.  Myka will be okay so long as it wins her Helena’s heart and rids her of the mask that the Speaker must wear in public.  She wants people to know that smile belongs to her - and to her alone.

"You're not gay," Claudia says in a lull in the conversation.  She sets her pen down on top of the sparse notes she's taken and it rolls off the side.  As it rolls, it makes the small sound of metal on paper, the quiet thump in time with Myka's heartbeat and she waits for the pronouncement of her doom.  "HG sent you to me because I'm _her_ fixer, Congresswoman.  You're a scandal she can't afford."

Myka looks up sharply then, fear cutting through her illusion of happiness with the precision of a surgeon.  Her heart hammers in her chest and she wonders what she’s done wrong.  She’d thought that this was how it had to be, for them to be together.  Had she gotten the signals wrong?  She doesn’t think that she has, for she’s seen what Helena Wells looks like when she’s in love.  It’s easy enough to find videos of her dead husband and child and to see the love in her eyes.

They love that Myka has apparently deluded herself into thinking extends to her as well.

Sucking in a shuddering breath, Myka tries to push all the hurt and anger out of her mind for the time being.  She has to know what exactly is happening here, or else she will make a poor decision.  Her confidence shatters before her and she swallows, her eyes hardening.  She can be every bit as bad as the Speaker if that is what this requires.  "So, I'm here for you to tell me to shut up and keep my head down, is that it?"

The girl - and she really is little more than a girl - before her bites her lip nervously for a moment before she pushes herself to her feet and sweeps her notepad and escaped pen into a drawer.  "No," she says quietly.  "HG is an idiot who wouldn't know a good thing if it slapped her upside the head and sent her ass over pretentious Cambridge-educated teakettle down the Capitol steps."  She stands with her hands on her hips, her shirt sleeves rolled up, scarcely taller than Myka when she's sitting down. 

And yet, somehow, it is Myka who feels small.  "Then what do I do?" she asks, desperate for any sort of help in the matter.

"You love her as you have been.  Anyone with eyes can see that you're both happier." Claudia sucks her bottom lip into her mouth and stares at Myka hard for a long time and Myka feels as though her ribs have turned in on her heart and she's slowly choking the life from herself. 

She cannot keep this up.  They already know something's up, they just haven't put their fingers on what yet, and then she'll be crucified for her betrayal.  A liar; or perhaps she’s a saint for putting up with this. 

Helena would find it poetic.

Myka wants to hate Helena right now.  She hates the Office of the Speaker of the House and hates how they couldn't just have been two normal, exceptionally broken people.  Two faces in a crowded room, met some enchanted evening.  Myka had known from the first time she'd seen Helena Wells that she'd see her again.  A liar and a good one, that's all she is. 

"I can't keep doing this," Myka confesses.  Her fingers fly to her hair and she digs them into curls.  It's calming, to run her fingers though her hair, to find knots and work them out one by one.  It's a painstaking process, hard and unpleasant, but it focuses her mind and keeps her from imaging doomsday before it's truly arrived.  "She can't possibly think that this is healthy."

All this lying and sneaking around and making out like teenagers in offices where the whole world (and probably the NSA) can hear them is an accident waiting to happen.  A mere slip-up and they'll both be doomed.

Claudia turns and grabs what looks like an e-reader from the briefcase that she's left stashed on the sofa.  She flicks her finger across it and twists her wrist in a series of gestures that are too fast for Myka to follow, before passing it over to Myka.

"These are polling numbers for your district, should you chose to go through with this." Claudia explains as Myka trails her finger down the line of very discouraging numbers.  "The next screen is what my web crawling program found with regards to your sexuality and your involvement with HG on various message boards.  AfterEllen thinks very highly of you, but most of the Freepers think that you're some sort of democratic plant."

That, at least, is nothing new at all.  Her conversation with Yeltz comes to mind and Myka lets out a quiet sigh. "So do their elected representatives,” Myka grumbles, reading through a series of very poorly spelled forums posts.  This is what’s wrong with America, apparently, idiots on the Internet.

"There's nothing more substantial that the faintest hint of Internet forum rumor, but you know what this town is when it comes to secrets," Claudia holds out her hand and Myka takes the tablet back.  "I hate to ask you to let something like this go, especially when you want to do such a good thing for us queer folk..." She flushes and looks down, bangs falling into her eyes.  Myka never would have guessed, not in a million years.  "But you don't have the political clout to pull this off, congresswoman."

Scandal rules Washington, it always has.  And they'd run her out of town for this.  She's not sure that they'd be hearings, but there might be.  They did it for the previous guy's chief of staff when it came out that he'd been to rehab long before being appointed to that position. 

"Then I'm what?"  Myka sighs and stares at her hands.  "Suppose to take the scraps she offers me because she's too afraid of losing her damn job to help me do this?"  And that is all that this is.  The pathetic Speaker trying to save herself from a reputation she already has and rumor that’s been flying for _years_ around town. 

Myka hates herself for knowing how easy it is to look past the fear to see the woman underneath; the woman that she’s starting to hate being in love with.

Claudia looks at her hard.  "You've built yourself a house of cards, Congresswoman Bering.  Be careful that they don't come tumbling down around you."

Leaving seems like a good idea after that, and Myka high-tails her way out of there.  She doesn’t want to think about what Claudia Donovan might think of her.  She’s not nearly so weak-willed that she doesn’t know when she’s being played.  It was like this with Sam too.  All the promises that he’d leave his wife that never came to fruition, and feeling like a kept woman for their entire affair.   

She hails a cab and doesn't care when the fare is far more than the amount of cash she has in her wallet.  She uses her credit card and stumbles up the steps to her apartment. 

She doesn’t know why she's shocked, really.  She should have seen this coming from miles away. She falls into the same patterns no matter who she falls in love with, it seems.

Inside her door, sitting on the low table where she leaves her keys and mail, there is a vase of flowers.  Myka reaches for the note out of habit, pulling it from its plastic holder and reminding herself to tell the Super that he can't just let himself into her apartment on a whim.  She has rights and privacy, not to mention a job that makes some of the papers that are strewn all over her dining room table relevant to political reporters.    

The note contains two words and with them Myka's heart crumbles to a thousand pieces that even the warmth in Helena's eyes this morning cannot heal.

_I'm sorry._

It is unsigned, but it doesn't need to be.  Myka’s fingers shake as she methodically shreds the note into a fine pile of dust on the table beside the beautiful lilies.  Death and mourning.  _Fitting_ , Myka thinks.  Her life is a train wreck.

It isn't over, but it might as well be.  All hope of a future is crushed and dead.  Myka cannot change her life and she cannot change this situation for the better.  Or even the slightly more politically advantageous.  She’s caught between two very terrible outcomes on a tightrope with nothing to keep her head above water.  She’s going to drown and Helena’s going to hold her under.

She stares at herself in the mirror over the table; sunken, sleepless eyes stare back at her.  Her hair is a disaster of humidity and worrying, and the dark circles under her eyes make her look like death warmed over.  She should call her secretary and cancel the morning and try and get herself at least looking presentable for the afternoon floor debate. 

Her phone beeps and Myka pulls it wearily from her jacket pocket.  She’s got a few missed calls, none from the one person she actually wants to talk to, to demand to know _why._ There’s an email notification amidst the missed calls from the office and her sister.   Pete has emailed her back, all cheerful updates and humor. 

And Myka wants to call him and tell him what's wrong so desperately that it cuts her up inside, her fingers navigating to her contacts and hovering over Pete's name.  She knows that she shouldn’t, because Pete isn’t on her side in this.  He’s in the business of secrets and protecting people like the Speaker.  People like Myka to him are expendable, and the weak are always voted out in two years. 

But it’s _Pete_ and it's worth the risk.  She needs a shoulder to cry on right now.

"Pete," she says when he picks up.  He sounds like he’s been sleeping or working out, distant and as bone-weary as Myka feels.  "Can you come over?"

He does it without question, because he's her best friend in the whole damn world and proof that people can surprise everyone. 

She lets him in and he takes one look at the flowers and sighs quietly.  "Oh Mykes..." he looks away and then pulls her into a hug.  He's still in his Secret Service-issued suit and tie, but he's wonderful. The same as he was with Sam and the aftermath of _that_ disaster. "Who is it?"

Myka lets out a choked little laugh.  There are tears prickling at the corners of her eyes and she can almost bring herself to let them fall.  She cannot though, she has to put on a brave face because to show weakness now would be to let the house of cards that Claudia Donovan had mentioned fall down around her.  And she couldn’t have that.  Not until she was truly ready to go as far with Helena as this was going to go.  If they went down, Myka has decided, they’d go together.  She’s done with being complacent in her own fate.   "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me."  Pete wiggles his eyebrows and Myka leans against him and laughs quietly into his shoulder.

"The Speaker."

"Wells?"  Pete's eyes widen and he steps back, hands still comforting on her shoulders.  "The Speaker of the House?  The _woman_ Speaker of the House.  The woman Speaker of the House whose family was killed in a tragic accident.  That Speaker?" At Myka’s nod, he lets out a low whistle. Reaching for his phone, he grins and says, “Mind if I call this in?  I’d love to see Artie’s head explode in real time”

"It was supposed to be a secret, Pete," Myka grumbles.  She pushes him away and folds her arms over her chest.  “And don’t – Artie has enough on his plate without having to worry about me too.”

Arthur Neilson had been her mentor too, after all.  He’d been the one who’d first urged her to run for congress if she was so unhappy with how things were being run in Washington.  While he and Pete had a somewhat adversarial relationship, he and Myka had always gotten along famously. 

Pete sees the shredded note on the table and doesn’t as again.  He points at the flowers, “Do you want me to get rid of them?”

Myka shakes her head.  “No,” she says.  “They’re the nicest thing she’s ever given me, despite all this.”

“Doesn’t seem worth it,” Pete says.

“It so rarely does,” Myka replies sadly.  “I hate it.”


	5. Chapter 5

The flowers wilt and die and Myka still doesn't move them.  She stands before them, keys in hand before she leaves and strengthens her resolve.  She will be the one to end this. She will not let the Speaker's cowardice get in the way of whatever is between them.  There is so much and there is so much potential.

She pretends that she doesn't notice the first of the beautiful blooms fall to the table top, as long dead as the gesture is on Myka's heart.

Her keys dig into her palm and she turns and walks away, her head held high. 

She is the liar, but so is Helena.  She's just the coward who doesn't dare defy her wishes.

Ted Yeltz is sitting in her office when she opens the door and tiredly shrugs off her coat and moves to remove her laptop and last night's take-home work from her bag.  Myka doesn't see him at first, distracted by the flowers in her foyer and what their death probably means.  There are so many ill omens in her live that spell out her doom in glorious bold face font upon the front he the Washington papers that she’s stopped bothering to count.

“Congresswoman,” Yeltz begins in greeting and Myka didn’t quite manage to contain her small gasp of surprise.  He is sitting in the armchair just off her door, hidden in shadow and malice.  “It’s good to see you again.”

Myka rests her hand on her heart and doesn’t pretend that he hasn’t startled her.  It’s better, when caught by a viper, to at least acknowledge that it’s there before trying to get away.  “Congressman Yeltz, you startled me.”

He pushes himself to his feet, hands on both knees and slowly exhaling as he does so.  Myka can’t help but wonder at the exertion, he’s not particularly old or large.  He just has the look that they all seem to have.  The weight of the free world is a yoke around all their necks, pushing them ever forwards.  “I’d been meaning to stop by ever since we went to the vote on HR-236. That was some shrewd maneuvering on your part.  My district thanks you for talking her into my farm revitalization project as well, we’re starting to get initial reports back, and the outlook is very good.”

Myka smiles wanly at him, but it doesn’t meet her eyes.  She’s trying to figure out this man’s angle, because compliments have no place in an arena such as this.  They are for winding up to throw fast, but throwing curve, to borrower an analogy from her youth, and Myka doesn’t like them at all. 

“Thank you,” she says almost judiciously.  “It wasn’t easy to get that added in, but I’m glad that it’s already paying dividends for your constituents.”   And she is glad on some level, because she has helped him fulfill the promise he was elected to keep.  He owes her, but she’s already cashed in her favor.  What comes next is anyone’s guess.

She thinks of the flowers, dead on the table in her foyer, and reaches out to shake Yeltz’s hand when it is offered to her.  This man is her salvation and her doom, and she can’t trust him within an inch of her life.

“I’d been meaning to ask you about potentially cosponsoring a bill with me,” Yeltz continues, and his hands are dry like sandpaper on Myka’s own.  His grip is firm and he doesn’t let go when Myka tries to pull her hand away.  “And I want you to make sure that it goes to a floor vote.”

She swallows, glancing down at her feet and back to her desk.  Her laptop is there, close and unyielding, and she’s sure that there will be a message from Helena, sent through some remote, randomizing server, waiting for her once she logs in.  She doesn’t know if Helena can save her from this gamesmanship, or if this is truly her doom.  “I’m not sure I can guarantee that, Congressman,” she tries, and her voice shakes with the weight of the conviction behind it.  She cannot _force_ anything out of Helena.  That much has been made abundantly clear. 

What matters is the in between. 

“I’ll have the bill for you by the end of the day,” Yeltz replies curtly.  He lets her hand go and is gone like the specter of what she once was. 

And Myka collapses into her desk chair and sobs, dry and horrible.  She knows what bill it is; she knows she cannot lie any more, and she knows she cannot support it.  He’s set her up to fall, and he knows he’s got her.

There have been rumors floating around some of the more in tune political analysts for some time now, that Yeltz and the religiously conservative half of the party are going to introduce a bill that will practically make it impossible for gay Americans to ever be treated equally by the government.  Myka just never thought that he’d actually lay that card down on the table.  Everyone knows that it will never have enough votes to pass the House, let alone the Senate.  It’s something of a joke within even the party itself.

Yet Yeltz wants Myka to help him sponsor it.  Myka’s eyes narrow and her fingers dig into her hair.  She’s sitting with her elbows on her knees and her eyes screwed up tightly shut, stinging from repressed, frustrated tears. 

All she can see are the flowers, dead on the foyer.

She seems them again and again and she knows that she cannot lie.

Myka stands up, and walks out of the office.

The office of the Speaker is across the building and down some stairs, but Myka covers the distance in what feels like seconds.  Her hands are shaking as she stands before the Speaker’s secretary and asks, politely if she has a minute.  She’s playing right into Yeltz’s trap, she’s sure he’s having her watched, but she doesn’t care.  This is why she started this relationship with the Speaker, the comment about her being a liar notwithstanding.

She’s middle of the road, more conservative than liberal and definitely not the sort of person who would get tangled up in a law like that.  She doesn’t want to lose the queer constituents she does have, and doing this would damn her forever.

The Speaker’s secretary is an older woman with greying hair and a severe expression who takes one look at the distraught look on Myka’s face and holds out a box of tissues while she calls into the Speaker’s office to see if she’s available.  After a moment of silence following the question, and Myka pulling herself together as best she can, the secretary nods and Myka is allowed past the final barrier.

The Speaker is seated  behind her desk, glasses on her nose and a copy of what looks suspiciously like the same bill Myka is sure Yeltz has had delivered to her office.  She glances up and her lip curls with contempt.  “ _You’re_ cosponsoring this?” she demands and Myka takes half a step back towards the nice secretary and her tissues.

She swallows, forcing herself to hold her chin up high as she reaches for the door and closes it with a snap.  “He knows something,” she says.

“I don’t care if he thinks we’re fucking on every surface in this building, _you_ do not cosponsor this tripe!” Myka can see her nostrils flaring and knows that she should have tried to stop Yeltz, she should have said no.  She hadn’t had a choice, but she doesn’t think that the Speaker – or Helena, and that is where this emotional response is coming from – will like that answer. 

The Speaker runs a hand through her hair, pulling her glasses off and tossing them onto the desk before her.  She sighs loudly and broadly, her forehead resting on her palm.  “I thought you were better than this…”

And Myka’s fists clench, because she _is_. She was trying to fix it, but she’d been played with a happy memory and the grim reality that she is nothing less than a pawn in this game.  Dead flowers in her foyer, again and again. 

“Helena,” Myka says more forcefully than she intends at first.  Her hands are shaking now, in tight little balls of energy that seem to radiate out from her smart suit and sensible shoes.  She has to keep herself under control.  “Yeltz knows something, about us.  He has _proof._ ”

“He has nothing,” Helena says dismissively.  “And if you signed onto this because he played you then you are a bigger fool than I thought.”

She bristles, stepping forward, around Helena’s desk.  She will not take this, not from Helena.  She’d never wanted… never wanted any of this.  She wants and wants and never takes because to take something that she wants would be to give herself everything.  She wants Helena desperately; she loves her despite her flaws and her terrible lies. 

Pete had told her that this was going to be a mess.  Myka hadn’t the heart to tell him it was from the start.

They both want to continue on, and this bill will damn Myka and Myka’s sure that Yeltz has something equally horrible planned for Helena.  He’s biding his time, watching, waiting.

And Helena is so close, her eyes flashing with anger as she grabs a handful of Myka’s jacket and yanks her in close.  Their hips collide and Myka is shocked at just how strong Helena is as she’s forced up and onto the desk once more.  “You tried to ruin this,” she hisses.  Her breath is hot on Myka’s cheek and Myka’s hands are on her shoulders, threading through raven black hair and longing for what it once been.

“I want to stop lying all the time,” Myka confesses.  Their foreheads are resting against each other now, and Myka’s half-sitting on her own damnation and she doesn’t care.  This is what she’s been missing.  She’d kept the flowers because they’re a symbol of what she might still be able to have.  “I went to her because I want to be a better person; you make me want to do that.”

“I can never be with you, not like that while I have this job…” Helena confesses.  Her voice sounds agonized, like she is the one who is slowly coming to this realization for the first time.  And Myka wonders if she has wanted this just as badly as Myka has. 

Myka kisses her because it is the only thing that she can think to do in a moment like this.  They have to sort out everything that’s about to happen, because Yeltz would not force this unless it was obvious that it was going to come out anyway.  A whispering here and there on a lesbian entertainment sight was one thing; a column in the _Post_ is another thing entirely. 

She kisses Helena with everything that she’s not quite been able to say.  The I-love-you in that moment tumbles from her lips and teeth and tongue, over and over again as she clings to Helena like she’s the only thing between Myka and certain doom.

“He never asked me,” she explains when they pull apart.  Her hands are shaking as they reach out to touch Helena’s cheeks.  “He just told me when I got in that I would be cosponsoring as a return favor for HR-236.”

Helena looks away, a curse at her lips.  “He doesn’t have the votes.”

“He knows it,” Myka agrees. “I think he expected that I’d just roll over and be complacent as he destroyed any and all creditability I could ever use to finally be free of these secrets.”

“You can’t come out, Myka,” Helena says again.  Her fingers are tangled in Myka’s hair and its frizzy and wild, a lipstick smear on her cheek.  All that Myka wants is to kiss her again, but she has to hold her ground on this. 

“It is going to start being a badly kept secret, then,” Myka says forcefully.  Helena’s eyes narrow and Myka leans forward and kisses her sweetly on the corner of her mouth, lingering just long enough to have her wanting.  “I want to do this for me, not for you or for my career.  I can’t lie anymore.”

Helena hums into the kiss and relaxes against Myka, and for just a moment, all was forgotten.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay in updating, took two weeks to start nanowrimo, am always looking for ~~victims~~ volunteers to read what I've got thus far. We're sitting at ~42k presently. My hand feels like it's about to fall off.


	6. Chapter 6

Scandal breaks like the tide, a slow ebb forward, building and building until the shore is completely consumed by it.  It crests and laps against the high sands, leaving a mark upon the very earth of all it wishes to expel from its body.  It is an exorcism, a cleansing, of the sea.

Myka surveys it from her knees, her lips and tongue and teeth far too busy with other, more pleasurable things to be distracted by the coming doom.  She wants this to last forever, but the house of cards they’ve built around themselves is on the verge of falling down.  They’re supposed to be planning to how to stop it, two people who should hardly even know each other. 

Naturally, as is their nature in all things, nothing ever gets done. 

It starts like this:

Helena says that it must stop, so naturally it does not.  They fuck in the office and in the Speaker’s hired car as the driver meanders slowly through DC, listening to music through headphones turned up so loudly that it’s probably illegal.  They collide against walls and in Myka’s small apartment, before ending up, splayed and planting, in Helena’s home once more. 

There is a picture of the dead little girl that Myka would have so liked to know on the bedside table that Helena has tipped down flat, her eyes cold for the briefest of instants before she draws Myka into her once more, and Myka lets her.

They collide with a passion that Myka can scarcely remember them ever having.  Their sin and damnation always came with Myka’s want and Helena’s desire for control – but now that both have been wrenched from them so cruelly, they are just two people who are desperate for each other.

Myka pulls Helena’s clothes from her body, leaving only stockings and garters – never any underwear with Helena – behind.  She pushes Helena down onto the bed and dips her head to her task, never once faltering.  She loves this, the control and the power, of knowing she can _stop_ and this woman, this unbelievably powerful woman will beg for her to continue.  She’ll beg and she’ll be desperate for something only Myka can give her.

Once, this was a battle of wills and attrition.  Myka was the one who submitted, who let herself be taken and let her rigidly straight and narrow worldview be blown open in a wide arc of Sapphic rainbow.  Now it is a mutual endeavor, and one that Myka finds herself wishing for on days when it cannot happen.

She lets her body speak for her, taking Helena again and again.  Driving her point home until they can scarce remember their own names, let alone their purpose in life.  She’s an expert at this now; the interplay between their two bodies is a science and an art in the highest order.  She’ll take and love and have and hold because there will so be nothing more.

And it will all fade to black.

Later, it is Helena who is whispering the confessions of love and Myka wonders if it is all a ploy.  She’s always had a way with words, but this is not what a coward would say.  Myka has enough degrees in literature to know what it truly means.  “I could fall in love with you Myka, a cross a thousand lifetimes, a million times over.”  Helena is stated and sweat-slick, her eyes hidden behind an arm casually flung over her eyes. 

They say that eyes are the windows to the soul, but Myka likes it better when Helena isn’t looking at her in moments like this.  She can tell when the lies come out and when they go back in.  They are the dead flowers that still litter her foyer table.  They are her want to believe them to be true.

Myka shifts, lips on freckled and beauty-marked skin.  “Just not this one,” she queries.  Her tongue is sidetracked then, almost too distracted to concentrate fully on Helena’s answer, as she traces the line of Helena’s collar bone.

“In this one I’ve already done it, again and again,” Helena says, and the arm over her eyes falls away.  Fingers cradle Myka’s chin and she looks up to see Helena’s eyes warm and kind and full of something that Myka’s only ever seen in passing, after she’s come and is trying to get Myka to do the same.  There’s love in that gaze.  And this is a confession of the greatest sin of Representative Helena Wells, Speaker of the House.  “And I never intended to do any more than have a bit of fun, darling.  I’m truly sorry that it’s gotten this out of hand.”

It’s easy to stare at her, to forget that she’s _American_ when she goes and acts so thoroughly English.  Myka does so openly, her lips tugging on a reply that she can’t quite articulate.  How do you tell your lover that it’s alright to fall in love, anyway?

She leans forward, her lips grazing against Helena’s lower lip before she takes it in her teeth.  Dragging it away and biting down as hard as she dares.  Helena groans underneath her and Myka smiles, kissing her and vowing to never be passive again.

Yeltz knows and he’s plotting their ruin.  Claudia Donovan has already called Myka to warn her that she should be expecting it within a week.  She’s already written a statement and has thanked all the gods she can name (and having trained in the classics for a year before changing majors – the number is quite high) that they’re not in the same party. 

In the end, all she says is that they are ruin on each other, damnation in its truest form.

Myka declines Yeltz’s bill co-sponsorship very publicly on a Wednesday, and speaks to a reporter from HuffPo that’s she’s worked with on numerous occasions to explain why she’d done it.  There’s music playing in the back of her mind as she speaks to the kind-faced girl with wild hair that’s taking notes studiously as she speaks, it’s her own death march. 

“I can’t be that person to my constituents,” Myka explains as best she can. 

The reporter, Leena something or other, inclines her head to one side and asks with all grace of a priest or a sage, “Does this have anything to do with the rumors that I’ve been hearing?”

And all it takes is Myka slowly closing her eyes and counting to ten to spell out her doom.

She straightens, the ten still breathing silent life into her lungs, and smiles politely at the reporter across from her.  “I’m afraid I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” she lies, and they both know it.  She leans in then, fingers closing over Leena’s wrist.  “Whatever the good congressman from Tennessee has to say is purely conjecture on his part.”

Leena looks down at Myka’s hand on her wrist and sighs, her shoulders slumping and her eyes alight with realization.  “It happened to me,” she confesses quietly.  “There’s copy editor, we saw each other in passing a few times and it became a _thing._ ” She glances around the room and adds, “Off the record, Myka.”

And for the first time in her life, Myka doesn’t hesitate.  She refuses to let Yeltz bring down her house of cards, but she’s not above letting it fall down herself.  She looks away from Leena and drums her fingers against her chin, as though she’s actually considering not answering (an admission of guilt in and of itself). 

“Yes,” she says at length.  “And the fall out is payback for my not cosponsoring this bill with Yeltz.” Leena looks confused and Myka feels herself nodding sagely.  “Which is completely foolish as he never had the damn votes to force it through in the first place.”

“I was going to say…”

When Leena says she grasps Myka’s forearm and tells her not to worry.  There are people in the press who understand, and somehow that makes Myka feel happier.  Claudia has her booked on Letterman next Monday, and Myka just hopes that it’s enough to get ahead of this thing.  Its Wednesday, Yeltz has only two days to get this inserted into the media cycle before it’ll be come non-news competing with the NFL and NASCAR for people’s attention. 

She sees him on her way to open session that afternoon and his smug, triumphant smile makes Myka’s stomach turn.  She avoids him for the rest of the day and goes to see Claudia Donovan in Georgetown, grateful that she’s a junior congresswoman from Colorado and no one knows her face beyond the few who are very plugged in.

“What you have to understand is that this isn’t going to be about you at all, Myka.  This is the Republican’s push to try and discredit the speaker by insinuating that she’ll sleep with anything that moves-”

“She does have something of a reputation…” Myka points out.

Claudia clicks her tongue and types something into her laptop.  “But it isn’t a _known_ reputation.  And besides, I haven’t had to quash a single rumor about her since you two got involved.  She’s over the moon about you…”

It’s truly astounding to hear Claudia and how much she’s changed her tune since she’s realized that this is going to happen regardless of how much Helena doesn’t want it to happen.  Myka’s about to be outed, Helena’s about to have her good name dragged through the mud.

They’ll both be lucky to keep their seats at this rate, Myka knows.  And Helena is going to be president one day.  Myka is sure of it.  This will destroy her if they aren’t careful.  They got too complacent before, taking advantage of the fact that everything changes, and everything stays exactly the same in this town. 

Myka chews on her lip and checks her email on her phone.  Pete’s sent her a few words of encouragement and ha told her that he wants to meet Helena in a non-professional capacity so that he can threaten to beat her up should she hurt Myka.  Myka doesn’t have the heart to tell him that Helena’s already stolen her heart and locked it away so that only Helena can abuse it for all eternity. 

They’re sitting there ten minutes later when it breaks, and Claudia is on her phone and cursing loudly before Brian Williams can even read the full lead in to the nightly news. 

_And finally, a scandal brews in Washington.  Now, I understand that this photo is grainy, but the Speaker of the House can clearly be seen in the arms of another woman in this photograph.  NBC believes that this woman is Congresswoman Myka Bering from Colorado…_

Myka’s phone starts to ring.


	7. Chapter 7

Cards and pieces tumble down into ash and dust, scattered across the floor of Claudia Donovan's office.  They stare at the television, hands clasped over mouths and eyes wide staring.  This cannot be, it is too soon, and yet it is all their doom, spelled out neatly in a TV sound bite.

And still, Myka's phone rings on.

Claudia doesn't ask her to answer it, not precisely.  She's got one eye trained on the television while she texts on a phone faster than Myka's ever seen someone text before.  She forgets, sometimes, that it is not her generation, the one that grew up with technology blossoming around them, but rather Claudia's that benefited the most from the advent of progress.  She makes vague gestures towards it, and Myka finally picks it up.

The number is to the central switchboard, it could be anyone.

It can only be one person.

Ted Yeltz; called to gloat.

Myka hates him with every fiber of her being and yet she knows that she must answer.

She slides her finger across the answer screen, and raises the phone shakily to her ear.  "Myka Bering," she says, even though her name is mud in this town now.  Brian Williams is spinning her damnation with a silver tongue and a nation's ear.

"Quite the commotion you're causing, Myka," He says and something in Myka snaps.

"Don't presume to be so familiar," she hisses into the phone and Claudia half jumps, her phone clutched to her chest as she watches Myka with wide eyes.  There is so much venom in her voice that Myka realizes what this must sound like, to an outsider.  "Congressman," she amends, and Claudia's eyes narrow and she nods just once.

"I'll be as familiar as I want, Myka. You played a dirty trick on me, and I played you one back."  Yeltz is in his office.  Myka can hear the flurry of motion that every congressional office is known for and the sound of the broadcast there too.  She hears Yeltz sigh, and then the noise dims. "Shame you had better secrets than most."

All her life, Myka has wanted to do good; to be right.  She's never done anything other than strictly by the book, and she'd picked her alignment based on what she'd thought represented her beliefs the best.  All she'd ever done was wanted to help people - but she'd learned that the game isn't about doing good, but rather doing nothing at all.

Nothing every changes, and everything stays the same.  It was a line from a movie or something that she'd heard once as a child and it had resonated with her throughout her life.  Myka isn't a coward, she's just foolish and in love.  And maybe, just maybe, she's not who she thought she was, politically.

She plays it cool, even-keeled and as steady as she goes.  "We both know that this isn't why you facilitated this going public."  Through the grace of God alone, Myka manages to keep her voice even while she speaks, but her tone could cut ice and shatter the fragile psyches of weaker men than Ted Yeltz.

He laughs, and it's almost cruel as Myka listens to it.  She has no response, and she's happy for that.  He doesn't deserve a response for gloating as much as he is.  "Ah yes, Speaker Wells.  Tell me, Myka, is she as good in the sack as she seems?"

Myka hangs up on him and drops her phone to the desk beside her in disgust.  Claudia looks up from her half-written email, and raises an eyebrow.  "Yeltz?" she asks.

Nodding, Myka sinks wearily onto the couch that's shoved into the corner of this room.  She wonders if it's supposed to be welcoming, or if it's supposed to be where Claudia sleeps when she's pulling an all-nighter.  It doesn't look particularly slept-on, but Myka probably isn't the best judge of that.

"He called to gloat," Myka says through a jaw that's working on several other words for what he's done.  "And it was never about me."

"It wouldn't be," Claudia replies, setting her phone down and muting the television.  "You're a small fish, Congresswoman; he's after a much bigger one."

And the thought of Helena's career going up in flames when it was just starting to look like she was a serious presidential candidate in the making cuts Myka up inside.  Myka wants that job on Helena's cabinet, and she's not going to lose it.  She doesn’t want to be an afterthought, not after she’d fought so hard to get this far.

"How is she playing this?"  Myka asks.

Claudia shrugs.  "A brush off."  And at Myka's frown, she shakes her head and sighs long and loud.  Obviously, Myka reasons, she's far too plebian to understand the inner-workings of a fixer-client relationship.  Especially when one of the parties involved possesses a mind as gifted as Helena Wells, still, it doesn’t quite make sense.  "Do you remember a few years ago, the Jets' coach's wife had a foot fetish?"

"I think I remember sending the headline to Pete thinking he'd get a kick out of it," Myka replies, brow furrowing as she tries to recall the details.  All she remembers is the initial headline.  There isn't anything else, other than the series of emails from Pete with pictures of hairy man feet and the words 'CANNOT UNSEE' written below them.  Myka has tried to forget those, though.

"And that's exactly the point.  He handled it amazingly, for a football coach."  Claudia gathers some papers and presses them into Myka's hands.  "I want you to read these and tell me which one sounds the most like you.  You're going to need to make a statement, and soon.  Do you have any reporters you trust?"

Myka thinks of Leena, who'd lent her a kind ear and hadn't let her dodge the question.  "I do," she says.

"Good, get them to your office as discretely as possible, you're going to brush off as well."

The papers fall slack in her fingers; they tumble down leaves in autumn, settling on the floor beside Myka's feet.  "That's it?"

Claudia looks up from her phone, her fingers still moving over it and the collar of her shirt all askew.  "Why wouldn't it be?  This is what you wanted, Congresswoman.  This is what HG wanted to give you."

And the happy tears that leak down Myka's cheeks as she picks up her papers and hurries from Claudia's office speak a language all their own.

-

Myka takes a cab back to the Capitol; she doesn’t dare ride the subway after the newscast.  The cabbie doesn't seem to mind as she calls Leena and asks for a meeting.  This is return for a favor, same as always, and Myka's going to give her enough to make her career.

She's fidgeting somewhere in traffic heading back towards the Mall when Pete calls.  He sounds shaken, and Myka knows that he's on duty.

"Mykes," he says as soon as she answers.  There are voices in the background here too, and Myka can swear she hears the president cursing loudly and colorfully.  She pretends that she doesn't hear that, and that Pete isn't on his cell phone in the presence of the leader of the free world.  "You alright?"

"I'm fine Pete," Myka says. Her mind is elsewhere and he really should be working.  She can't understand why Helena would never tell her that this was the plan all alone.  Her eyes narrow, and Pete asks another question that she doesn't even hear.  Helena had planned for this to happen, somehow.

Why?

"Mykes?" Pete tries again.

"Sorry," she says distractedly.  "Look, I've got a million things on my plate, Pete, can I call you later tonight?"

"Sure," Pete replies and then he's gone and Myka's alone with the cabbie somewhere by the Jefferson Monument.  She might as well get out here, but she's not that stupid.  A walk that long and she'll end up chased by reporters.  No, best to just do this the right way.

Helena had done this on purpose.  She'd orchestrated their downfall for one very specific reason.  To be outed would tank her political career, Middle America doesn't want a lesbian running their country.  Or someone who is well, bisexual.  Myka groans, pressing her thumb and forefinger into her eye sockets and savoring the blackness.

This has something to do with Yeltz.  It's always been about him.

Myka bites her lip and watches the city inch by.

She runs through the conversation she had with Helena that morning, when they were sleep warm and dozing in the middle of her bed.  Time hadn’t had little power then, and they were just two people without purpose.  Myka likes Helena best that way, when she’s not pretending to be one of a hundred people just to appear neutral and approachable.  Even Myka is lulled into a false sense of security around her.  She should know better, she truly should.

But this is all for her.

Or something like that.

She debates giving the cabbie directions to the basement entrance to the Capitol, but thinks better of it. 

Leena is waiting for her in her office, perched on the edge of an overstuffed and largely decorative chair and dodging glares from Myka's secretary.  "I really don't think you should be talking to reporters right now, congresswoman," her secretary says as Myka collects her messages and the stack of mail that's come in for the day.

It's easy then, to glance over at Leena and smile shyly.  "I think I can be the judge of that, don't you think, Janice?"

"Of course, congresswoman."  Myka's secretary looks down, almost submissive as she goes back to her work.  Myka lets her feel that way, her smile almost calculating as she does so. She's not the only one who can flaunt her power like a cloak around her.  And then somehow, she hates herself for doing so.  She smiles wanly at Janice, and steps into her office.

“Are you in alright?” Leena asks when Myka closes the door.  “That picture’s pretty damning.”

She sidesteps easily into the story that they’ve planned, and somehow it comes easier than she’s expected it to.  She’s not lying when she smiles and shakes her head.  “It isn’t damning at all, when you think about it.  Sure, I wasn’t out, and the Speaker wasn’t either… I suppose it’s just two coworkers who happened to well, start up a relationship.”

Leena looks impressed.  She sets her pad down on her knees and stares up at Myka as she’s settled behind her desk.  “That… is not the reaction I was expecting,” she eyes Myka slyly and adds, “On the record.”

Myka bows her head in admission and Leena’s eyes widen.  She picks up her notepad and pen and holds it ready.  “How does it feel, then, being outed so publicly?  Your party comes down pretty hard on homosexuality.”

And she doesn’t particularly have an answer.  She leans back in her chair and stairs up at the ceiling, her eyes half closed.  “I’m not out to anyone, you know?  I used to think it was this dirty little secret.  That it would be my undoing and that when people figured it out – and they did otherwise we wouldn’t be talking right now…”

“I suppose not,” Leena agrees.

It feels dirty, to point fingers and name names.  Claudia didn’t think it was a good idea to implicate Yeltz until Myka had a chance to sit down with the Speaker.  She had no idea what Yeltz’s game was, but she had told Myka that she was pretty sure that Helena probably did.  All this was far too calculated, and even now, Myka just feels like collateral. 

“This was never about me though,” Myka says sadly.  She stares down at the phone messages.  Two lobbyists, a few friends from both sides of the aisle, Artie... The last message is the most recent.  It’s from her father, and there is no memo with it in Janice’s nice, neat handwriting. 

“It’s about the Speaker?” Leena asks.

Myka picks up the phone and punches in the Colorado Springs area code before she hangs up the phone, the message still shaking in her hands.  She’s thirty four years old.  She shouldn’t be this scared to call home. 

She dreads what her father might say, dreads how he might react.  What would Tracy say?  Would she be able to brag about her ‘House Rep’ sister to all the other suburban housewives anymore?  Would they even care?

There are so many questions and Myka truly doesn’t know.  She doesn’t know what she wants or why she wants it.  All she knows is that the house of cards is crumbling slowly and surly, and she must save herself as best she can.

“I wouldn’t know,” Myka lies easily.  She smiles kindly at Leena as she makes a note.  “I would assume so, though.  She holds far more cards than I do in this game.” 

Leena nods once and gets to her feet.  “I’ll leave you to your calls, Congresswoman.”

“Thank you,” Myka says, holding out her hand.  This is her gamble, the ultimate gamble now.  “For everything.”

“I think you’ve got this right, Myka,” Leena says, her hand on the doorknob.  “For what it’s worth.”


	8. Chapter 8

The story unfolds on television, because that is the nature of politics these days.  Myka sits with a remote clutched in her hands, watching her character being defaced on mute, a phone cradled to her ear.  “Darling,” Helena breathes, and Myka bites at her lip to try and ignore the feeling that washes over her when Helena speaks to her that way. 

“You knew this was going to happen,” Myka says. 

And there’s no accusation.  There’s just the resigned truth of the matter, little puzzle pieces falling into place and Myka knowing without even the slightest shadow of a doubt that this was how it had been meant to play out.  She bites at her lips, harsh and chapped as her office walls seem to close in around her.  This is how it’s going to end.  This is how it was foretold.  She knows this now, and she feels like she’s been played like a fiddle. 

Helena lets out a sigh, a quiet puff of air that sounds like a gunshot across the silence of her office.  “I’m sorry,” is all she says, and somehow it isn’t good enough.  Nothing, Myka thinks, will ever be good enough again.  And she loves and wants to love this woman, this woman who will not let her in. 

The silence seems like it goes on forever, and Myka is the one, as always, who breaks first.  “Why couldn’t you tell me?” she seethes in the middle of the empty room.  Helena is so far away from her that it doesn’t even seem to matter.  “Why couldn’t you say that you were going to expose Ted Yeltz for the horrible man that he is and be done with it?”

There’s always been some doubt in Myka’s mind that Helena even is attracted to women, or if it’s just her.  Myka isn’t even sure that she can ever ask Helena if she’s right in her assumptions, or if she even wants to know.  She wants this and she will to see Yeltz crucified for this.

“Come to the press conference,” Helena says. 

The press conference in twenty minutes when Myka’s eyes are red-rimmed from crying and her head is full of the hateful words that her father had spat into the phone.  Her mother wouldn’t even speak to her – and Tracy?  Tracy had sent her an email telling her that she would love her no matter who she loved. 

She’s so confused and hates everything that’s happening. 

“To be your prop?” Myka asks. She’s bitter and spiteful and more than a little angry. 

What Helena says next is something that Myka isn’t expecting.  “To be my _partner_ ,” she says, placing all the emphasis on the word that Myka knows she must be desperate to hear by this point in time.  “No one knows who you are, Myka.  They know you as a statistic and a little red district in Colorado.  They don’t see you; they don’t see your face.  And I want to show you to them, to show you off because you are _so_ much more than that.”

She cannot swallow the swell of pride that threatens to burst forth within her, and she bites the inside of her cheek hard to keep from telling Helena exactly where her flattery will get her.  The answer is apparently evident anyway, in the chuckle that Helena lets out.  “You are mine to show off to the world, Myka Bering,” Helena adds.  “And if you’re willing, I want to show you to them.”

And god, Myka is willing.  This is all that she’s ever wanted, all of it over and over again, a thousand times over and she cannot stomach the idea that this could all just be another game for political gain.

“Will you tell me what you plan to do after?” Myka asks, resigned to her fate already.

“Darling, by the time the press conference is over, Ted Yeltz’s career will be utterly destroyed, and we will be victors for a change,” Helena boasts. 

They’ve very little time, and Myka is already smoothing down her hair and tabbing at her eyes with a tissue.  Her make up’s run, but she can fix it once she gets over to the Speaker’s office.  She tells Helena she’ll be there and straightens her shirt collar in the mirror.  The pearls that her mother gave her on her seventeenth birthday hang at her neck, a deep bruise from the last time she and Helena were together barely obscured by her collar and the necklace. 

She’d been so tender, and yet so forceful, and Myka had wanted more – _more_ – until there could be nothing else.  She’d drowned in that feeling of her downfall until it had consumed her and she’d crested on that wave.  Helena had followed her, sweaty and panting, to the very edge, before falling to pieces under the constant and steady pressure of Myka’s tongue. 

There’s no sense in hiding who she is any more.  The secret’s out.  The only question is who is she now?

Representative Myka Bering pulls on her blazer, rolls up the sleeves, and stalks out of her office.

There are very few people in the halls, which is odd, but Myka’s sure they’re all glued to their televisions, watching her relationship blow up like some wannabe celebrity’s bad opinion in a tweet.  She hurries and slips into the office of the Speaker of the House and smiles politely at the exasperated-looking secretary who’s currently on three phones at once.  She nods and jerks her head towards the back.  “They’re expecting you,” she says, before going back to her calls.  “No, the Speaker will not comment on that, Mr. Blitzer, and I’ll thank you to not ask me again.”

Myka swallows and then steps forward, knocking once on the door before slipping into the Speaker’s office.  Her eyes widen, nearly half the Democratic leadership is in the room, all standing around Helena’s desk and arguing over a set of papers.  “Wells, you cannot seriously be considering this, it’ll tank your viability as a candidate!” the Majority Whip is saying.  Myka hovers by the door, watching him, afraid to come further into the room. 

“I don’t think it will, David,” the Speaker says evenly.  She pulls a sheet of paper from her desk and lays it flat on the desk for them all to see.  “This is the latest polling data that I was able to gather before Yeltz went public.  The people are for it, no matter how slimly, and we’ve just had a major election, so we have a president now.  Why not see where people are in two and half years?  You and I both know that these numbers are trending upwards.”

Representative Simmons, one of the most long-seated and senior Democrats that Myka can think of speaks next.  He’s an old man, but a kind man.  Myka’s spoken to him many times out on the Mall, he likes to sit by the reflecting pools and think, same as Myka.  “Why throw your career away on someone like her, though, she’s not even in the party.”

“Because I _love_ her,” Helena says, getting to her feet and stepping forward.  In her heels she’s almost as tall as Simmons and the Whip, but she seems to tower over them.  “And, if you’ll excuse me gentlemen, I have a press conference.”  She steps around Simmons and slides into place besides Myka, her fingers twisting into Myka’s hand and her smile positively radiant as she bends to whisper, “Don’t worry, darling,” in her ear. 

And if Myka feels anything other than worried, it’s drowned out by the twisting, seething knot at the pit of her stomach.  She’s marching to her doom, standing over the fires of the mountain beyond the black gate, left with one simple choice.  

She prays that this choice, this painful, awful choice, is the right one to take.

“So help me if you’re using me,” she whispers back, and Helena’s smile widens.  Her fingers tug Myka to her, and she kisses Myka in front of Simmons and the Whip as though she hasn’t a care in the world. 

Together, they are to face the nation.

For divided, they would surely fall.

Myka had known many things about Representative Wells before they’d ever met, she’d known of her skill with oratory, of her ability to command the attention of a single room with a word.  It isn’t until this moment, as Helena stands before the podium, one hand still twined in Myka’s fingers and cameras flashing them both blind, that Myka truly understands Helena’s skill. 

“Alright,” she begins, and Myka notices that there are no prepared remarks for her.  She swallows nervously, and looks out over the see of reporters and television cameras.  This is what hell is, she decides, and she grips Helena’s fingers tighter.  “I came here today because I wanted to address a series of unfortunate rumors that have been circulating regarding my conduct as of late.”  She takes a breath and turns to Myka.  “This is Representative Myka Bering, from the Colorado Second District.  She’s a new representative this term, and won her district convincingly.”  Helena’s smile is dazzling and Myka almost feels blinded by it once more, but Helena’s doing the best brush off of her life and Myka doesn’t want to miss it for the world.  “As is sometimes the case when people work together, attraction is had, and romance is found.  Representative Bering and myself are two consenting adults who work in what are essentially different departments of the same enterprise.  Two consenting adults,” Helena adds, “who have fallen in love.”

There is a roar of ‘Speaker’ and ‘Representative Wells’ that almost deafens Myka then, and Helena points to an older looking gentleman that Myka recognizes as one of the Washington Post’s correspondents.  “Go ahead Tom,” she says.

“Speaker Wells, do you feel that you have done anything inherently dishonest by hiding your relationship from the American people?” he asks, pen and tape recorder held at the ready.

Helena tilts her head to one side.  “I don’t think so,” she says at length, to the flash of cameras and the scrape of pens on notepaper.  “What happens in my private life may be subject to more scrutiny based on my – on both of our – positions, but if I were to have taken up with a man, there would be none of this controversy.  No, we’d end up in _US Weekly_ holding hands and not have what is essentially a public outing turned a national scandal of apparently great magnitude.”

“Follow up?” Tom asks.

Helena nods, her expression schooled neutral in a way that Myka is almost envious of.  She knows her face is an open book and her fear is evident in her every facial tick.  “Go ahead.”

“Do you believe that is what this is?” He asks.  “An outing?”

“I can answer that, Mr. Radford,” Myka says, finally remembering the man’s last name and stepping forward.  “Hello everyone,” she adds, stepping up to stand next to Helena.  She’s figured out Helena’s game and she’s going to use it to the best of her ability.  “I’m Myka.”  She forces herself to smile and feels Helena’s hand on the small of her back, an encouraging weight.  “I’m sure you all know that there’s a lot more that goes into lawmaking than that old School House Rock song says,” there’s a laugh through the room and a few nods from the older crowd who actually _gets_ the reference.  “This is another ugly facet of it.”

“Yes,” Helena leans forward.  “If your opponent has a weakness, expose or exploit it, that’s the rule of this town?”  She sighs quietly, her fingers twisting in the back of Myka’s blazer.  “It appears that even something that as innocuous as Myka and my relationship is not above such treatment.”

“Don’t you worry that your constituents will think you’ve lied to them?” Someone in the back calls.

Myka shrugs.  “I um…” she bites her lip and leans forward, feeling a bit embarrassed. “I honestly didn’t know either, so I guess we’ve all had the wool pulled over our eyes, huh?” 

She’s playing along as best she can, and she can tell by the gentle pressure on the small of her back that she’s doing well.  She turns and smiles at Helena, who grins back at her.  They’re doing well, handling this as best they can, by simply not caring as everyone seems to feel like they should.  It’s a classic brush off, and Myka feels the tension in the room start to vanish, and the questions start to be more about Myka’s politics and how they get along when they’re so ideologically opposed.

It’s like a calming breath, almost, and when Helena takes a final question from someone in the back, Myka can see the triumphant smile blossom across Helena’s face.

“Do you have any idea who would want to do this to you both, Speaker?” 

Helena leans forward, lips curling into an almost vicious smile.  “Myka wouldn’t support Ted Yeltz’ bill that would effective expand the state constitutional bans on gay marriage to include most public sector jobs, as well as make it harder for gay youths to get state and federal loans and grants for college.”

“He never had the votes for that,” the reporter responds.

“Maybe he merely wished to create some controversy around Myka for disagreeing with him?”  She shrugs.  “I’d ask him.”

They leave the press room and get back to Helena’s empty office and Myka finds herself backed up against the wall, Helena’s lips on her pulse point.  “You were perfect,” she says, pressing a kiss into Myka’s neck. 

And Myka feels like this could actually be a future.


	9. Chapter 9

They fuck in Helena’s office, a final affront to the office of the Speaker that they’ve taken full advantage of to cover up their sin.  Myka’s got her skirt up around her waist and Helena’s fingers deep inside her, her head thrown back as she comes, her whole body clenching and shuddering, and her mind completely and utterly blank. 

Sinners or saints, Myka doesn’t even know who they are anymore.  She’s played her role and she’s stood beside Helena at a moment when that was what needed to be done. She’s given and taken, she’s stood with the best.  She’s a House Representative and she’s going to have her cake and eat it too.

And somehow, as Helena’s fingers slip from her, to splay against her thigh, Myka finds herself laughing. 

Helena brushes a kiss against her lip, her expression  full of all the love that Myka knows will always be there for her, should she be willing to look.  “What is it, darling?” she asks.  Her tone is mild, but Myka knows the laughter is catching and she can’t help herself.  Soon she’ll be laughing too. 

“Everything changes,” Myka says, catching Helena’s cheek against her palm and pulling her up. Their kiss is messy, all teeth and tongue and not lasting nearly long enough to sate whatever it is that has Myka going now.  She’d never known defiance was what would get her going, that sticking up two middle fingers to everyone and everything she’s ever stood for would make her want this so badly.  “And yet everything stays the same…”

“Darling, if you’d like to fuck with the door open, all you had to do was say something,” Helena murmurs, her lips nipping at Myka’s earlobe.  Her teeth bite into the flesh there and Myka feels herself clench and her hips cant upwards once more.  She wants more, she wants and wants and they’re going to crash and burn, she’s so sure of it.  Yeltz can still sink them.  “I doubt that Joyce will appreciate the show though.”

God, Myka can only imagine it.  If a kiss has caused so much, what would this cause.  Her skirt around her waist and Helena’s fingers dangerously close to drifting back inside her for an encore?  They’d have a field day, and _god,_ it’s enough to make Myka want all the more. 

“That’s not what I mean,” Myka replies, and her hands run down the front of Helena’s shirt.  “and you know it.”

There’s a beat then, as Helena’s hand hovers and Myka’s hips roll forward, where they both understand Myka’s meaning perfectly.  This is no different, and yet it is.  And Myka doesn’t feel any different.  She doubts Helena does either.  And maybe that’s what’s so wonderful about it.  Myka’s sinned and fallen, Helena’s corrupted her utterly, and it’s somehow okay. Because Ted Yeltz will get his comeuppance and the news media are sure to take their side.

Lesbians, after all are hot, right? 

And Helena’s fingers slide home and it’s all Myka can do to remember her own name, let alone Ted Yeltz's and all he’s done.  She rocks forward, her fingers sliding down into Helena’s pants.  They fumble, clumsy and  made awkward by the angle and her own passion, until they curl around Helena and jerk upwards, rubbing small circles on her clit. 

And they are one.

Later, as lipstick is reapplied and Helena runs her fingers through her hair distractedly, a defense spending memo in one hand as she skims it, Myka wonders if one day, Helena truly could be president.  She thinks she can, it just depends on this storm.  They’ve weathered it so well, they’ve taken the scandal and turned it on its head for their own gain.  Myka thinks that they’ll survive, but she never can be entirely sure with these things. 

Doubt creeps into the corners, the dark recesses of her mind where she cannot help but stand naked in the great void that is her own lack of confidence. 

And yet they cannot be complacent in this.  This is where they must throw off that idle complacency and buck the trend before the trend consumes them utterly.  Myka is resolute.  It’s all she can be.  She stands tall and proud, reapplying her make up and leaning around Helena to glance over the memo.  She won’t be voting for it, not just yet. 

“This is a bad draft,” Helena mutters, setting down the memo and fiddling with the binder clip that’s holding it together.  “Need to get with someone at the NSA to talk about their expenditures.”

There’s a knock on the door then and Helena’s secretary sticks her head into the room.  It smells like sex and sin and poorly kept secrets, and Myka doesn’t care. She leans against the desk, picking up the memo and flipping through it, eyebrows climbing up her forehead at how much money the NSA wants.  Helena’s got a point.  Someone is going to have to talk to them, this will never get off the floor otherwise.

“What is it?” Helena asks.

“I just thought you should know, Madam Speaker,” the secretary crosses to Helena’s desk and picks up the remote that’s discarded, almost knocked off the desk earlier. She points it at the television and John Stewart’s face swims into view. Myka glances towards the window and sees that it’s dark out.  She hadn’t realized it’d gotten so late.

“—Yeltz, a senior republican leader, has been accused by the Speaker of the House of publicly outing her affair with junior congresswoman Myka Bering of the Colorado Second District in an act of retribution for Congresswoman Bering’s not wanting to sign onto his incredibly bigoted bill.” Stewart taps his pencil, staring straight into the camera, “I guess we know why he brought it to the floor in the first place then.”  There’s a laugh from the audience, and Stewart’s face grows more serious.  “Here on the show, we’ve had a good time poking fun at Congresswoman Well’s career – and she’s been good enough to come onto the show a few times to rebut some of the more raunchy jokes, but I want her to hear this.  We’re behind you one hundred percent.”

Myka turns, her mouth half-open in shock.  Helena’s secretary is smiling approvingly.  “They’re all like this, Madam Speaker.  Yeltz said what he’d done on Hannity earlier and he was completely unremorseful about it.  The crucifixion is averted.”

“And thank god for that,” Helena laughs, taking the remote as it’s offered to her and muting it.  Myka watches as Stewart wiggles his eyebrows at the camera.  She wonders what he’s talking about, and realizes that she doesn’t want to know.  “You can go home, Joyce.”

“Thank you, Madam Speaker.”

Joyce leaves and Myka lets out a low sigh.  Maybe they are going to be safe. 

“You’re right,” Helena says, gathering her things.  Myka blinks and straightens, not quite following.  “Everything changes, but everything does say the same.”

And it’s in that moment that Myka decides that she’ll follow Helena Wells to hell and back.  It’s an all-consuming desire, a feeling of ‘what’s next’ that’s been instilled with her since she’d shown up in Washington, a fresh-faced country bumpkin with two master’s degrees and former secret service written all over her.

“I love you,” is all she says.

Helena looks up, a quiet sort of a smile on her face.  She doesn't reply just yet, but Myka knows that the 'I love you' is there all the same. They finally understand each other, and Myka's down with playing the innocent little girl, corrupted by the office of the Speaker of the House. “This isn’t over, not by a long shot," Helena says. There's a determination about her that makes Myka weak at the knees, wanting all over again.

“But we’ve won the first battle.” Myka replies.

“And we’ll turn the tide of the war,” Helena agrees.  She offers Myka her arm and the two of them walk out of her office together for the first time.  They cut down the stairs and step out into the night, two people, very much in love. 

And that?  That’s enough for Myka for now. She knows someday soon Helena will be on one knee and she’ll be gasping out a surprised yes.  And maybe it will all be for political gain, but when Helena’s sitting in the Oval Office it won't matter in the slightest. Myka knows that with just a word she can have Helena on her knees now, she holds all the cards, for Myka has given her her love. Myka knows that she will hold all the power in the free world.  She can bring this great woman into the world and have her when no one else can. And she will have her, should Helena be willing.  This is just a start, and it’s an auspicious one. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we've come to the end. The throwing off of the complacency and the rise of ambition. And it is glorious. Thank you all for reading. :)

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah I don't even know what the fuck. Written for AU week 2013.


End file.
